Versatile Amphibian

It's been a while since I've posted. Work is the reason for this: there is lots of it! My assumption as to why this is is that many more organisations are feeling the impact of the broad spectrum disruption that's coming down the line from increasingly established Digital Economy businesses. Great for me, troubling for my clients...  The disruption is characterised by: Unequal competition between relatively local, focused, traditional organisations and global, digital-first conglomerates A rapid move to consumer-centricity from product-centricity as the predominant business model Uncertainty about how to achieve rapid change from a standing start or even where to begin with a programme of strategic change I'm coming to believe that mobile telecoms carriers are likely to be the next to suffer reimagination of their industry. Open infrastructure projects, network virtualisation and over-the-top services, combined with zealous regulators suggest that is now...

One of the key findings from our Media Consumer Survey this year was the increasing lack of interest (and outright hostility towards) social media advertising. This is not really much of a surprise. While people have become more sophisticated in their use of social, splitting general narcissism (Facebook), professional narcissism (Linkedin) and photographic narcissism (Instagram) from sidesplitting banter (Whatsapp), advertisers have persisted with the blunt instrument of display advertising (see below). For the record, I have a long term girlfriend and don't currently operate a retail store... ...but perhaps Facebook is telling me something? In any case, only 9 percent of people responding to Media Consumer Survey told us that they ever clicked adverts on social media. Furthermore, our focus groups suggested that the main reason that people are migrating to platforms like Snapchat (7 second narcissism) is because they can't be spied on or marketed to by advertisers. Th...

Digital’s a broad church and I think you need to read widely to get a sense of the changes it’s bringing. To that end, this blog summarises some of the stories that have caught my eye this week. This week: apps flop at Christmas, Polaroid launch tiny and huge imaging products, PC on the slide, super-tech on the rise Media Sony announce the streamed games service that was presumably the idea behind their acquisition of Gaikai in 2011. In summary, from the summer, PS3 games can be streamed to Sony Playstations and TVs. An interesting idea, but I’m not sure how the games themselves will compare to those already available on tablets, smartphones and even smart TVs. http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/playstation-now-lets-gamers-stream-ps3-games-to-ps4-vita-and-tvs/0126467 Ace Metrix ranks the most effective TV adverts in the US last year – Google #1 - I include it here because I’m not sure how it works! I’ll try to find out… http://www.acemetrix.com/news/press-releases/the-search-is-ove...

This week: PS4 aims to create gaming celebs, NASA connects moon, Nokia arrives at party 3 years late, electric bikes and self-assembly game consoles Business models An interview with one of the designers of the new Sony PS4, which is intended to ‘celebritize’ gamers. I like the idea and it’ll be a tiny benefit to a subset of gamers. Ultimately though, the PS4 will win or lose on the quality of its games. Simples. www.fastcompany.com/3020236/tech-forecast/building-a-console-from-the-ground-up-playstations-top-priority-was-to-make-ga Some useful data points about when people visit mobile websites versus desktop. Not ground breaking, but nice to have. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/when-are-mobile-owners-visiting-retail-sites-37655/ Now this is interesting: Twitter is now a more important social network than Facebook amongst teenagers. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/twitter-overtakes-facebook-as-teens-most-important-social-network-37352/ Facebook ad performan...

A number of people have asked for a transcript of my speech from this year's RTS Cambridge on the future of TV. Here's the edited highlights (because the visual gags just don't work in text ;) ) ---START--- What television is today is little changed from a decade ago; and, at the same time, TV is profoundly different:   A decade ago , the majority of TV sets sold were 25 inches or smaller. [i]   16 million homes received analogue TV signal. [ii]   Sixty per cent of the country only had five channels. [iii]   High Definition TV was yet to launch. Netflix was a US based company that used the post to distribute DVDs to its 1.5 million customers. [iv]   YouTube had not been founded.   Google – who’d buy Youtube for $1.65 billion in 2006 - had just broken the $1 billion revenue barrier, for the first time. [v] There were two million broadband households [vi] …   … but broadband speeds started at 128 Kbit/s , that’s one eighth of a ...

The final part of my impressions from Newsxchange 2012 is the text of my own speech at the conference, which was 1/3 of an Associated Press session on the future of news broadcasting. My piece covered the effects of proper technology on the creation and distribution of news. I don't do much work in the industry, so this was set up as a techie's impressions of the future. Innovation in capture devices like the panoramic ball camera and Google Glass have been enabled by massive growth in the sales of smartphones and tablets, which next year are set to be the first billion unit a year computing category. And when you have a billion smart devices shipping, you have the manufacturing capacity for billions of fast CPUs, billions of DRAM chips and billions of CMOS digital camera chips. And what's more, there are tens of thousands of people with the software and hardware design skills to bring those components together into an amazing computing exper...

I’m of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week: Gaza conflict spreads to social, Pebble suffers growing pains, Apple to lose tablet dominance next year, attacks Google with giant reptile Digital media The most interesting bit of this fluff piece on how people use their mobile phones is the proportion of UK consumers that think the devices stop them truly relaxing. I can’t decide whether uptake of wearables would make relaxation easier as the connected experience fades into the background, or harder because connection is even more persistent. http://www.mobile-ent.biz//news/read/half-of-brits-would-rather-check-their-tablet-than-speak-to-partner/019844 Israel’s offensive in Gaza has led to a rather public slanging match on social media, with Twitter hosting the brunt of the fighting. A couple ...

This week I’m going to go counter-trend and say nothing about Surface or the tiny iPad or the sleek new Macs. You’ve all heard enough about those things and I can’t add much. Instead, this post is a collection of the less well publicised articles that have caught my eye. This week: CMOs slam mobile, Mayer prepares for Yahoo! future, Penguin House emerges from shadows, future of wearables and connected cars in focus Digital media CMOs aren’t happy with the results they’re seeing from mobile advertising. Not a surprise to me – the techniques of mobile advertising are not well established at the moment, so trial and error is inevitable. http://www.digiday.com/brands/brands-struggle-in-mobile/ Some Olympic Games sponsors saw a lift in brand awareness. I hope it was worth it! http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/topics/branding/some-olympics-sponsors-enjoyed-lift-in-brand-awareness-esteem-24181/ It is a little silly that ebooks are counted as software and therefore attract VAT in the...